1920] 



NOTES 



63 



NOTES 



Strutt's Sylva Italica. The Arboretum has lately obtained a co])y of the 

 Sylva Italica; or Portraits of Forest Trees in Italy, distinguished by their 

 Antiquity, Magnificence or Historical interest, drawn from nature and 

 etched by Jacob George Strutt, and published by Dickinson & Son, 114 

 New Bond Street, London, and by the author, 52 Via Babuino, Rome, 

 Like the Sylva Brittanica by the same author it is a folio, and it consists 

 only of part i containing the descriptions and portraits of four trees. The 

 Sylva Italica appears to be a rare book. It is not mentioned in tlie Brad- 

 ley Bibliography; it is not in the catalogue of the British Museum (Natural 

 History), the catalogue of the library of the Royal Gardens at Kew or in 

 that of the Dej)artment of Agriculture of the United States. 



Plate 1 represents Tasso*s Oak standing in the garden of the Convent of 

 Sant' Onofrio in Rome founded in 1491. Although the author does not 

 mention tlie fact, this tree is Quercus Ilex. It was still standing in 1900, 

 but a photograph in the Arboretum collection taken in that year shows that 

 it had lost many branches in the great storm of September 20, 1842, and was 



apparently in poor health. 



No. 2. Cypresses in the garden of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli. These are 

 Cupressus sempervirens xav.fastigiata and, according to Strutt, '' the largest 

 of these trees measures sixteen feet eight inches in circumference at five feet 

 from the ground and is about one hundred and ten feet in height." 



No. 3. The Colonna Pine in the garden of the Colonna Palace in Rome 

 and planted by the Colonna Family in 1332 " as a lasting memorial of their 

 vengeance, by the death of Cola di Rienzi, for the slaughter of three of their 

 kinsmen at the gate of San Lorenzo, during the contest that existed between 

 the Tribune and the haughty nobles of Rome." Strutt 's portrait rejjre- 

 sents a magnificent specimen of Pinus pinea. He gives the height as about 

 one hundred and twenty feet and the circumference of the trunk at five feet 

 from the ground as twenty-one feet four inches. 



No. 4. Michael Angelo's Cypresses, " These magnificent trees," we are 

 told, stand '' in the large court of the Carthusian Convent of Santa Maria 

 degli Angeli, which together with the noble church adjoining were con- 

 structed by Michael Angelo on the site of the ruins of the Baths of Diocle- 

 tian." These trees {Cupressus sempervirens var.fasiigiata) are said to have 

 been planted by Michael Angelo and to have been originally four in number. 

 Three of the original trees appear in Strutt's engraving; the fourth, which he 

 says had been destroyed by lightning, had been replaced by a young Cypress 

 of the same variety. Strutt gives the circumference of the largest of these 

 trees at five feet from the ground as thirteen feet eight inches and the height 

 of the tallest ninety-five feet. 



Famous Trees of Korea. The Arboretum has recently received from 

 the Right Reverend Mark Napier TroUope, Episcopal Bishop of Korea, an 



